Galaxy Note 7 review: What’s the opposite of “bang for your buck?”

Samsung is back with the Galaxy Note 7, the sixth version of its flagship Galaxy Note handset. Wait—did Samsung forget how to count? The Note series skipped a number this year, apparently so that the Note 7 would look more like a sibling to the already-released Galaxy S7. The unified branding feels appropriate since—despite five months of development time between them—the Note 7 is more like the Galaxy S line than ever. You're getting the same Snapdragon 820 SoC, the same 4GB of RAM, and the same camera.

So what do you get in the Note 7 after five additional months of waiting? Beyond the usual 5.7-inch, 1440p display and the S-Pen, the Note 7 series brings an upgrade to USB Type-C, adds another biometric ID system in the form of an iris scanner, and comes with a really, really fat price tag. You're going to pay at least $850 for the 64GB version, the only version for sale in the US.

SPECS AT A GLANCE: Galaxy Note 7
SCREEN	5.7" 2560×1440 (515 ppi) AMOLED
OS	Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with TouchWiz
CPU	US: Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (two 2.15 GHz Kryo cores and two 1.6 GHz Kryo cores) Int'l: Eight-core Exynos 8890 (four 2.3 GHz Mongoose cores and four 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53 cores)
RAM	4GB
GPU	US: Adreno 530 Int'l: Mali-T880 MP12
STORAGE	64GB with MicroSD slot
NETWORKING	Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 GPS, NFC
Cellular Bands	GSM: 800, 1900 CDMA: 800, 1900 UMTS: 850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100 TD-SCDMA: 1880, 2010 LTE Bands: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 38, 39, 40, 41
PORTS	USB Type C, 3.5mm headphone jack
CAMERA	12MP rear camera with phase detection autofocus and OIS, 5MP front camera
SIZE	153.5 x 73.9 x 7.9 mm (6.04 x 2.91 x 0.31 in)
WEIGHT	169 g (5.96 oz)
BATTERY	3500mAh
STARTING PRICE	$860
OTHER PERKS	quick charging, wireless charging, heart rate sensor, notification LED, IP68 water resistance, Iris scanner, Samsung Pay

Design and build quality

Seen a Samsung phone in the last few years? If so, you know what to expect here. The Note 7 has a metal frame with a glass back and highly reflective metallic coloring underneath.

The name might not say it, but in Samsung parlance, the Galaxy Note 7 only comes in an "Edge" version this year—the screen curves around the left and right sides of the device. I'm still not aware of any real need for the "Edge" screen, which distorts the left and right side of apps or the top and bottom of widescreen videos. Some people say it "looks cool," and I'm sure it helps the devices stand out at a Verizon or Best Buy showroom, so it sticks around—geometric accuracy be damned.

Samsung absolutely nailed the ergonomics of the Note 7. While the mostly glass construction is more or less the same, the sharp sides of past "Edge" devices are gone. The Note 7 has a symmetrical body—it's curved as much on the front as on the back, and the glass-to-metal-to-glass transition is smooth. The side of the device is basically an uninterrupted curve. Though this might sound like a lame marketing pull quote, the Note 7 really is one of the most comfortable phones I've ever held.

It's a shame that, even at $850+ dollars, Samsung won't upgrade to a metal body. With so much glass, dropping the phone will probably cause serious damage. Some manufacturers, like Huawei, have started to treat glass-backed phones as the "cheap" version, with metal used for premium devices. This year the front glass on the Note 7 is Gorilla Glass 5, a new formula by Corning that improves drop survivability in exchange for being less scratch resistant.

All the usual Samsung additions are here: clicky home button/fingerprint reader combo flanked by capacitive (and incorrectly ordered) "Recent" and "Back" buttons, rear heart rate sensor, and S-Pen. Like the Galaxy S7, the Note 7 promises IP68 dust and water ingress protection and has a MicroSD slot. Also like the Galaxy S7, Android 6.0's "Adoptable Storage" feature (which lets you combine the MicroSD card and internal storage into a single, unified storage pool) has been disabled. If you're a digital packrat, Adoptable Storage should be one of your favorite features of Android 6.0 Marshmallow; since it's missing on the Note 7, this MicroSD slot is less useful than a MicroSD slot on other post-Marshmallow phones.

The Note 5 shipped last year with a bit of a design flaw; users quickly learned that if you stuck the S-Pen in backward, it would get stuck. This year, it won't. The S-Pen can be inserted backward just a tiny bit, but it never gets trapped in the holder.

The S-Pen itself hasn't been updated much. It's a bit smaller than the old one, but it still feels incredibly cheap. This hollow plastic tube would feel more at home in a 100-pack of disposable Bic pens than in an ultra-premium $850 smartphone. Would it kill Samsung to spring for a metal stylus?

(While I'm dusting off old complaints I've made about every device in the Note series, I'll also say that not being able to press the home button with the stylus remains clunky. You can put the stylus on the home button and awkwardly impart force to the clicky home button through the stick, but it's a touch stylus—the home button should respond to a light touch, as other phone features do.)

Besides the iris scanner—which we'll get to in a minute—the other main improvement this year is the USB Type-C port. Samsung is one of the last major OEMs to make the switch to the reversible port, probably thanks to wanting to maintain compatibility with the Gear VR headset. This year the new Gear VR comes with USB Type-C so that Samsung can make the transition. In the box for our T-Mobile version of the handset, Samsung helpfully included a female Micro USB to male Type-C converter—so your old Micro USB cables can plug in to the Note 7—and a Type-C "OTG" cable for plugging in Type-A USB devices.